antipaucity

After a friend of mine told me he wanted to deploy Jitsi on my main webserver, and me saying “sure”, I decided I wanted to get it up and running on a new server both so I knew how to do it, and to avoid the latency issues of videoconferencing from central North America to Germany and back.

Before I go into how I got it working, let me say that the official Quick Start guide is good – but it doesn’t cover anything but itself.

Here’s the basic setup:

• CentOS 7
• Docker
• Apache 2.4

What To Do:

Once you have your new CentOS instance up and running (I used Vultr), here’s everything you need to install:

yum -y install epel-release && yum -y upgrade && yum -y install httpd docker docker-compose screen bind-utils certbot git haveged net-tools mod_ssl

I also installed a few other things, but that’s because I’m multi-purposing this server for Squid, and other things, too.

Enable Apache, firewalld, & Docker:

systemctl enable httpd && systemctl enable docker && systemctl enable firewalld

Now get your swap space setup:

fallocate -l 4G /swapfile && chmod 0600 /swapfile && mkswap /swapfile && swapon /swapfile

Add the following line to the bottom of your /etc/fstab:

/swapfile swap swap default 0 0

Restart your VPS:

shutdown -r now

Get your cert from Let’s Encrypt (make sure you’ve already setup appropriate CAA & A records for your domain and any subdomains you want to use):

certbot -t -n --agree-tos --keep --expand --standalone certonly --must-staple --rsa-key-size 4096 --preferred-challenges dns-01,http-01 -m <user>@<domain.tld> -d <jitsi.yourdomain.tld>

Create a root crontab entry to run certbot frequently (I do @weekly ~/renew-le.sh)

Go to the home directory of whatever user you plan to run Jitsi as:

su - <jitsi-user>

Begin the Quick Start directions:

• git clone https://github.com/jitsi/docker-jitsi-meet && cd docker-jitsi-meet
• mv env.example .env
• Change the timezone in .env from Europe/Amsterdam if you want it to show up in a sane timezone (like Etc/UTC)
• mkdir -p ~/.jitsi-meet-cfg/{web/letsencrypt,transcripts,prosody,jicofo,jvb}
• docker-compose up -d

Now configure Apache for SSL. Start with this reference I posted.

But in the [sub]domain-specific conf file z-[sub]domain-tld.conf, add proxy and authentication lines (so that only people you allow to use your video conference can actually use it):

ProxyPreserveHost on
ProxyPass / http://localhost:8000/ nocanon
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8000/
ProxyRequests       off
ServerAdmin warren@warrenmyers.com
AllowEncodedSlashes NoDecode
<Proxy http://localhost:8000/*>
    Order deny,allow
    Allow from all
    Authtype Basic
    Authname "Password Required"
    AuthUserFile /etc/httpd/.htpasswd
    Require valid-user
</Proxy>
RewriteEngine       on
RewriteRule        ^/meetwith/(.*)$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [P]
ProxyPassReverseCookiePath /meetwith /

Reload your configs, and make sure they’re happy, fixing any errors that may exist:

apachectl graceful

Setup at least one user who’ll be able to access the site:

htpasswd -B -c /etc/httpd/.htpasswd <user>

You should also configure firewalld to allow only what you want (http, https, ssh):

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=http && firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=https && firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=ssh

With any luck, when you now navigate to https://[sub.]domain.tld in your web browser, and enter your username and password you created with htpasswd, you’ll get the Jitsi welcome page!

Other Resources:

• Check out the Jitsi subreddit – r/jitsi
• Jitsi on Twitter: @jitsinews

I noticed I haven’t updated my previous post on keeping my Let’s Encrypt certs updated since building-out a couple new servers.

systemctl stop httpd.service
/bin/certbot renew --preferred-challenges http-01,dns-01 --must-staple
systemctl start httpd.service
systemctl restart postfix

Not a big change, but one worth making

If you haven’t installed certbot yet, you should

Qualys – https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest

High-Tech Bridge – https://www.htbridge.com/ssl

Comodo – https://sslanalyzer.comodoca.com

SSL Checker – https://www.sslchecker.com/sslchecker

Last year I posted a simple script for keeping your Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates current.

In conjunction with my last post sharing the “best” SSL configs you can use with Apache on CentOS, here is the current state of the cron’d renewal script I use.

systemctl stop httpd.service
systemctl stop postfix
~/letsencrypt/letsencrypt-auto -t -n --agree-tos --keep --expand --standalone certonly --rsa-key-size 4096 -m user@domain.tld -d domain.tld
# you can append more [sub]domains to a single cert with additional `-d` directives ([-d otherdomain.tld [-d sub.domain.tld...]])
#...repeat for every domain / domain group
systemctl start httpd.service
systemctl start postfix

I have this script running @weekly in cron. You should be able to get away with doing it only every month or two .. but I like to err on the side of caution.

I’m stopping and starting Postfix in addition to httpd (Apache on my system) for only two reasons: first, I am using some of the LE-issued certs in conjunction with my Postfix install; second, because I don’t know if Dovecot and my webmail system need to make sure Postfix is restarted if underlying certs change.

In follow-up to previous posts I’ve had about SSL (specifically with Let’s Encrypt), here is the set of SSL configurations I use with all my sites. These, if used correctly, should score you an “A+” with no warnings from ssllabs.com. Note: I have an improved entropy package installed (twuewand). This is adapted from the Mozilla config generator with specific options added for individual sites and/or to match Let’s Encrypt’s recommendations.

Please note: you will need to modify the config files to represent your own domains, if you choose to use these as models.

[/etc/httpd/conf.d/defaults.conf]

#SSL options for all sites
Listen 443
SSLPassPhraseDialog  builtin
SSLSessionCache         shmcb:/var/cache/mod_ssl/scache(512000)
SSLSessionCacheTimeout  300
Mutex sysvsem default
SSLRandomSeed startup builtin
SSLRandomSeed startup file:/dev/urandom  1024
# requires twuewand to be installed
SSLRandomSeed startup exec:/bin/twuewand 64
SSLRandomSeed connect builtin
SSLRandomSeed connect file:/dev/urandom 1024
SSLCryptoDevice builtin
# the SSLSessionTickets directive should work - but on Apache 2.4.6-45, it does not
#SSLSessionTickets       off
SSLCompression          off
SSLHonorCipherOrder	on
# there may be an unusual use case for enabling TLS v1.1 or 1 - but I don't know what that would be
SSLProtocol all -SSLv2 -SSLv3 -TLSv1 -TLSv1.1
SSLCipherSuite ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256
SSLOptions +StrictRequire
SSLUseStapling on
SSLStaplingResponderTimeout 5
SSLStaplingReturnResponderErrors off
SSLStaplingCache        shmcb:/var/run/ocsp(128000)

#all unknown requests get domain.tld (over http)
<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /var/html
    ServerName domain.tld
    ServerAlias domain.tld *.domain.tld
    ErrorLog logs/domain-error_log
    CustomLog logs/domain-access_log combined
    ServerAdmin user@domain.tld
    <Directory "/var/html">
         Options All +Indexes +FollowSymLinks
         AllowOverride All
         Order allow,deny
         Allow from all
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/javascript text/css text/php

[/etc/httpd/conf.d/z-[sub-]domain-tld.conf]

<Virtualhost *:80>
    ServerName domain.tld
# could use * instead of www if you don't use subdomains for anything special/separate
    ServerAlias domain.tld www.domain.tld
    Redirect permanent / https://domain.tld/
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:443>
    SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/domain.tld/cert.pem
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/domain.tld/privkey.pem
# if you put "fullchain.pem" here, you will get an error from ssllabs
    SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/domain.tld/chain.pem
    DocumentRoot /var/www/domain
    ServerName domain.tld
    ErrorLog logs/domain-error_log
    CustomLog logs/domain-access_log \
          "%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \"%r\" %b"
    ServerAdmin user@domain.tld

# could put this in defaults.conf - I prefer it in each site config
    SSLEngine on

<Files ~ "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php3?)$">
    SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</files>
<Directory "/var/www/cgi-bin">
    SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
</Directory>

SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" \
         nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
         downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0

    <Directory "/var/www/domain">
         Options All +Indexes +FollowSymLinks
         AllowOverride All
         Order allow,deny
         Allow from all
    </Directory>

</VirtualHost>

I use the z....conf formatting to ensure all site-specific configs are loaded after everything else. That conveniently breaks every site into its own config file, too.

The config file for a non-https site is much simpler:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot /var/www/domain
    ServerName domain.tld
    ServerAlias domain.tld *.domain.tld
    ErrorLog logs/domain-error_log
    CustomLog logs/domain-access_log combined
    ServerAdmin user@domain.tld
    <Directory "/var/www/domain">
         Options All +Indexes +FollowSymLinks
         AllowOverride All
         Order allow,deny
         Allow from all
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

If you’re running something like Nextcloud, you may want to turn on Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15552000; includeSubDomains" in the <VirtualHost&gt directive for the site. I haven’t decided yet if I should put this in every SSL-enabled site’s configs or not.

After moving to a new server, I wanted to finally get ownCloud up and running (over SSL, of course) on it.

And I like subdomains for different services, so I wanted to put it at sub.domain.tld. This turns out to be not as straight-forward as one might otherwise hope, sadly – ownCloud expects to be installed to domain.tld/owncloud (and plops itself into /var/www/owncloud by default (or sometimes /var/www/html/owncloud).

My server is running CentOS 7, Apache 2.4, and MariaDB (a drop-in replacement for MySQL). This overview is going to presume you’re running the same configuration – feel free to spin one up quickly at Digital Ocean to try this yourself.

Start with the ownCloud installation instructions, which will point you to the openSUSE build service page, where you’ll follow the steps to add the ownCloud community repo to your yum repo list, and install ownCloud. (In my last how-to, 8.0 was current – 8.2 rolled-out since I installed 8.1 a couple days ago.)

Here is where you need to go “off the reservation” to get it ready to actually install.

Add a VirtualHost directive to redirect http://sub.domain.tld to https://sub.domain.tld (cipher suite list compiled thusly):


<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName sub.domain.tld
Redirect permanent / https://sub.domain.tld/
</VirtualHost>


Configure an SSL VirtualHost directive to listen for sub.domain.tld:


<VirtualHost *:443>
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/sub.domain.tld/cert.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/sub.domain.tld/privkey.pem
SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/sub.domain.tld/fullchain.pem
DocumentRoot /var/www/subdomain
ServerName sub.domain.tld
ErrorLog logs/subdomain-error_log
CustomLog logs/subdomain-access_log "%t %h %{SSL_PROTOCOL}x %{SSL_CIPHER}x \"%r\" %b"
ServerAdmin user@domain.tld
SSLEngine on
SSLProtocol all -SSLv2 -SSLv3
SSLCipherSuite ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256
SSLHonorCipherOrder on
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
<Directory "/var/www/cgi-bin">
SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
SetEnvIf User-Agent ".*MSIE.*" nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
# allow .htaccess to change things
<Directory "/var/www/subdomain">
Options All +Indexes +FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Comment-out every line in (or remove) /etc/httpd/conf.d/owncloud.conf.

Move /var/www/html/owncloud/* to /var/www/subdomain.

Make sure permissions are correct on /var/www/subdomain:

• chown -R :apache /var/www/subdomain

Run the command-line installer: /var/www/subdomain/occ maintenance:install

Fix ownership of the config file, /var/www/subdomain/config/config.php to root:apache.

In config.php,

• change trusted domains from ‘localhost‘ to ‘sub.domain.tld‘
• make sure ‘datadirectory‘ is equal to /var/www/subdomain/data
• change ‘overwrite.cli.url‘ from ‘localhost‘ to ‘https://sub.domain.tld‘

Navigate to http://sub.domain.tld, and follow the prompts – and you should be a happy camper.

In my how-to for Let’s Encrypt, I gave an example script that can be called via cron (or manually) which will renew Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates under CentOS 6.

If you want to do it on CentOS 7 (which is what I am now running), use the following:

cd ~/letsencrypt
git pull
systemctl stop httpd.service
~/letsencrypt/letsencrypt-auto --agree-tos --keep --rsa-key-size 2048 --standalone certonly -m user@domain.tld -d domain.tld [-d sub.domain.tld [-d ...]]
systemctl start httpd.service


Now, what does this script do? Step by step:

1. clear-out the last grab of the Let’s Encrypt git repo (there’s probably a better way to do this, but I don’t know what it is)
2. go to root’s home (/root)
3. clone-down the Let’s Encrypt toolset
4. stop httpd (Apache in my case, though you might be running nginx or something else
5. run the cert tool in automated form:
   1. agree to terms of service
   2. keep current cert if it doesn’t need to be updated
   3. key size of 2048 bits
   4. run the standalone webserver to verify “ownership” of the domain
   5. generate just the cert
   6. administrative email (optional, but “encouraged”)
   7. domain(s) to issue cert for (must be individually identified with successive -d flags; LE does not support wildcard certs)
6. restart httpd

I set mine to run @weekly in cron – @monthly is likely good enough, but since it’s “free” to run, running slightly more than is necessary seems good to me. Plus, if you’re getting SSL certs for many domains all being served from the same server, they may have different expiration dates, so running more often is better.

My crontab entry for renewing certs:

@weekly /root/renew-le-ssl.sh